The Naming of Newtown

Debunking the John Webster Myth and How Newtown Really Got Its Name

More on Netown

By Matt Murphy 

Discover the true origin of Newtown’s name in Sydney. Uncover the myths surrounding John Webster, early colonial history, and how Australia’s first “new town” really came to be.

Inconveniently and inexplicably placed about three metres up the wall, on Eliza Street near the corner of King Street, there is a plaque that reads:

New Town Store

Newtown takes its name from the grocery store opened on this site by John and Eliza Webster in 1832. The Websters placed a sign on top of their store that read “New Town Store”. The first recorded official use of the place name was in the Sydney Gazette on 24 November 1832. The Zanzibar Hotel now generally occupies the site of the “New Town Store.”

Below this, in smaller font, it adds that the plaque was unveiled by the mayor of Marrickville in 2008 and that it was an initiative of the council to promote the area’s heritage.

The longer version of this story is that the Websters initially had a ‘town store’ further north up what is now King Street (then known as Cook’s River Road) but then, noticing that the junction with Enmore Road and Australia Street a few hundred metres further south was getting more foot traffic relocated their store and added the word ‘new’ to differentiate it from their former location. The prominent sign became somewhat of a landmark at the road junction and the area became known as Newtown. The side street, Eliza, it is presumed, was named after Eliza Webster.

Known as the Zanzibar when the plaque was unveiled, the pub was later renamed Websters.

If the council put a plaque up, and the pub considered it significant enough to rename itself, then this story must be true, right?

The first known use of the name New Town (as two words) goes back to at least 1827 with the Sydney Gazette writing on 7 September: ‘New Town – There is talk of having a suburb of this name, as well as our neighbours, the Tasmanians’. 

Indeed, there already was a New Town in Tasmania, and when they heard, the Hobart Town Gazette wrote on 6 October 1827 that: ‘A suburban village similar to our own Newtown, it is said, will shortly be constructed in the confines of Sydney.’ 

While the plaque states the name was officially used in November 1832, this isn’t true either as the borough, with set borders, wasn’t proclaimed until thirty years later. What was true is that on 24 November 1832  the Sydney Gazette wrote: ‘The neighbourhood about the spot of ‘Devine’s Farm’ has obtained the name of Newtown.’ Six months later, on 2 May 1833, the Gazette reiterated that: ‘The houses upon Devine’s Farm, about two miles from Sydney, have so increased in numbers of late, that it is called New Town.’ Importantly, Devine’s Farm’ was on the eastern side of present-day King Street. Webster’s New Town Store, on the west, of the street, was not part of this property. Also significant is that the earliest subdivisions in the area, from 1833 to 1835, are not only on the other side of the road, but also much further south, closer to St Peters. 

And who was John Webster?

He was born in c1811 in Lancashire and arrived on the Lord Melville on 21 October 1830 convicted of stealing 30 shillings. He was assigned to a Leslie Duguid, in King Street in Sydney. Duguid, taking Webster with him, then moved to the area now known as St Peters in 1833. 

On 12 February 1836  John Webster, who is by this time recorded as being a free man working as a shoemaker and living in Newtown, married Margaret Cuddihy, which again contradicts the name on the plaque – Eliza.

The block of land the Webster’s Hotel now sits on was sold as part of a subdivision in 1842 with the new street, Elizabeth appearing on maps, soon after changed to Eliza. The purchaser of this site was William Brady who then sold it to Charles Underwood a year later and then on 7 December 1844 Underwood sold it to John Webster. Webster continued to use the premises as a bootmaker’s workshop but by the late 1840s his occupation was recorded as a grocer. 

As of March 1854 the Websters also ran Newtown’s first post office from the site. With the introduction of the railways line in 1855, he changed the name of his grocery business from Webster’s Store to  Railway Store. 

In 1861 Webster obtained a licence to sell spirituous liquors from his corner site which he named the Daniel Webster Hotel, later renamed Webster’s Railway Hotel. He then relocated the store and post office to the corner of Whately Lane. He leased out the hotel while managing the shop and post office until selling his shop site and then taking charge of the hotel in 1872 at which time he renamed it the Oxford. 

In calling his hotel Daniel Webster, John Webster later said that he named it after the creator of Webster’s Dictionary, from whom he believed he was descended. 

Margaret Webster died in 1874, aged 62. John Webster remarried four months later to Mary Pardoe, 20 years his junior. In 1876 he gave the hotel to his son, William, in return for a comfortable pension. He died in 1896 in John Street Marrickville, his age reported as being 86.

In short, despite what the council’s plaque says, the name Newtown has nothing to do with John Webster. He was a convict and not even in Australia when the name was first coined and didn’t open his grocery store until about two decades later, nor is there any indication he called it the New Town Store. That said, John Webster is nonetheless synonymous with the early days of the suburb.

The real reason for the name is not exactly known, though the best guess is that with the exception of Parramatta, which was quite distant, Newtown was the first area outside of the metropolis of Sydney to begin being subdivided, and hence becoming Sydney’s first ‘new town’.

You can follow Matt on Instagram @mattmurphy8